Owner

Current status

Detailed Description

There are several places in Fedora where GNOME is explicitly or implicitly the default desktop:

The default live image (called "Desktop Live") is GNOME-based.

The default installation from the DVD includes (only) GNOME.

The default applications in various comps groups are mostly GNOME applications.

The proposal of this feature is to change these defaults:

Make the KDE live image the default. (Naming can be discussed.)

Make the KDE Plasma Desktop workspace the default desktop environment installed by the DVD.

Prefer applications based on the KDE Platform to applications using GTK+ and GNOME libraries where applicable.

Benefit to Fedora

GNOME 3 is the subject of a huge number of user complaints. Users are running away from GNOME in droves. The KDE Project, on the other hand, has succeeded in maturing "KDE 4", i.e. their Plasma Workspaces and their KDE-Platform-based applications. The KDE Software Compilation 4.6 (and when Fedora 16 will be released, 4.7), and popular third-party applications based on the KDE Platform 4 (e.g. Amarok and Digikam) have become known for being popular (even among Fedora users, despite GNOME being the current default), feature-rich and stable. We believe the flexible KDE Plasma Desktop along with the powerful KDE Platform applications would make a much better default for Fedora than the hugely unpopular GNOME 3.

Scope

Change the default live image to KDE Live. (Trivial.)

Change comps to preselect @kde-desktop instead of @gnome-desktop by default in Anaconda. (Trivial.)

Clean up the various default applications in comps. That's the biggest part of the task, but it is mainly comps work. I would suggest though that we use this opportunity to actually improve comps to understand the concept of different desktops: Add a desktop selection to Anaconda before the package selection, and add a comps syntax which allows saying that Amarok is default in @sound-and-video if KDE Plasma was selected, but optional if GNOME was selected, and the other way round for Rhythmbox.

How To Test

Download the default live image. Verify that it includes the KDE Plasma Desktop and popular KDE Platform applications, as opposed to GNOME and GNOME applications.

Test a default installation of Fedora. Verify that it includes the KDE Plasma Desktop and popular KDE Platform applications, as opposed to GNOME and GNOME applications.

User Experience

Users will see a default desktop environment they will actually like, which allows them to change the things they don't like through configuration dialogs and which is both more featureful and more stable.